low-key nervous this is my first ask ever but like, what do you think of Zandik (subsequently Dottore) with a reader at least 7 years older than him? wiser, older, more experienced when he was young and clumsy, a trustworthy individual whom he always ends up relying on as an adult... paired with smut, reader being very condescending...
HI THERE! Answering this ask and will put It here because we are doing a little tradey trade! Without further ado....
Gift for @succhiadottore who made me some beautiful fanart!!!❤️
When Zandik had first enrolled in the Akademiya as a young adult, he had very little idea of the social scope of most people. He believed brazenly that he did not need to rely on anyone for any kind of help, and found himself in situations far more difficult when done alone due to his own stubbornness.
Now, enter you, a seasoned researcher, admired by many but matched by very few. You were exactly the kind of person that caught his eye, but still, the two of you were fundamentally different. You, on one hand, were approachable and friendly, always willing to help with someone's thesis or peer review papers until dawn just because you were kind like that. He was, of course, anything but.
You were sitting in on a professor's seminar one morning when you really noticed him for the first time. Hardly tamed pale blue curls sticking in different directions and sharp, deep red eyes that kept themselves fixed intensely on the problem presented on the board.
He debated the professor, who seemed to be very used to (and a bit weary of) this routine for a good ten minutes before he allowed the student in question to come up and correct what he could possibly believe incorrect about the formula.
He wrote up a completely new system that exposed the exact flaws in reasoning with explanations so clear that it was evident this wasn't simply an attempt of being stubborn or difficult. The professor, both astonished and exasperated, sighed a long, defeated sound before conceding. The other students seemed quite used to this routine as well.
You had heard whispers of a peculiar first year, intelligent as he was unwilling to accept any form of partnership or guidance from another soul. Zandik, they called him. Heretic.
You must've been looking too long for him to grab his things and pass you by on the way out the door.
"Are you going to wipe that dumbfounded look off of your face, or did you not understand a single shred of what is before you? I expected better from a Herbad of your.....level of achievement."
One of Zandik's fatal flaws was, of course, his not-so-subtle superiority complex atop the heads of other students who worked hard and cried through nights of work he could have done in under an hour's time.
"Actually, you forgot one little detail."
He stopped dead in his tracks, his hand braced on the side of the archway, halfway out the door. His head turned slowly over his shoulder as you sauntered over to the board, adding the last little detail to his seemingly perfect formula.
The students cheered. The professor may have even cried.
The scholar gritted his teeth, waving you off like an insolent little bug. Pettiness, he said to himself. So be it.
"But you know, Mr. Zandik," you started, placing the chalk aside,
"Your mind is truly brilliant. And still, brilliance has its blind spots."
You were looking at him fully now, holding his gaze so directly that he felt himself start to falter.
"When you put more than one modicum of brilliance together," your voice lowered in the stillness of the room, the astonished onlookers holding their breath,
"not even the sky is the limit."
And oh, how he loathed you after that fateful day. He'd outsmarted every sage, every senior scholar, every individual that seemed to hold academic superiority over him in any capacity. But you...you could glide through halls with every person gravitating to your pull, shaking hands and making lighthearted jokes while still respecting the integrity of each person, even with your awareness of being vastly more intelligent.
Was it not an insult? To know that you are better than everyone else yet still treat them as your equal? Zandik could hardly comprehend the thought.
So, he started to stalk your every move. You had a routine that, while easy for someone like him to follow, still found it hard to understand why you did what you did.
Your mornings started with a cup of tea and the garden surrounding your house, rich in foliage that you personified and spoke to while watering and swapping out soil. What use was it to greet a tomato good morning?
You'd make your walk to the Akademiya and meet with various students requesting your help and professors asking to have their lesson plans looked over. You took it all in impossible stride, still making time to have lunch outside in Razan Garden.
After that, you'd head down to the vendors on Treasures Street and the Bazaar and spend a bit of time picking over the items being sold, bags lining your arms as you carried them outside the city's gates. You'd load them onto a wagon and wave off the rider for safe travels. The food, water, clothing, and books you bought were being transported to the desert where lower income families could receive them free of charge.
Finally, you'd return home to have a quiet dinner under gentle starlight, closing the windows and letting the lights shining in them go dark.
What Zandik had learned is that you seemed to do most everything in your life for the benefit of others. He was angered by this, wondering why, out of everyone you could offer such a charitable hand towards, you just had to humiliate him?
He was furiously scribbling down these thoughts in a notebook, having walked back to his dorm in a sour mood.
Then, the idea struck his mind in that moment. Perhaps your version of charity to him was the humiliation. You perfected his formula with the slightest push. It's not like he was wrong, after all.
Although, this served to just make his brain ache even further. He stared brows furrowed at the ceiling as he lay in bed that night, fuming and pondering in equal parts.
If you could recognize and even correct his brilliance, you weren't dull like the rest of the institute in his eyes.
For the first time, perhaps, Zandik swallowed his pride.
He stood at the door of your office for a good half hour before he finally caved and knocked.
You didn't even look up from your desk or stop writing.
"I've been able to see you through the window this whole time."
"...the curtain was drawn."
"You have a very unique silhouette, Mr. Zandik."
Your office was warm in a way that the freezing halls of the rest of the institute would never dare to be, constantly blasting out the sun's heat until the inside was nearly frozen. A small incense burner hung from the ceiling, making the room smell of herbs.
"You wished to speak with me?" You finally looked up from your notes, noticing the tension of his clenched jaw and his clear reluctance to even be sitting before you. It really must've taken a lot for him to show up here.
But still, he continued to show up. He wanted you, the most revered Herbad that he absolutely hated, to be his mentor, though he'd never call it that.
You would spend hours with his papers scattered about your desk that he was completely confident he'd perfected, biting his tongue when you made adjustments that took his reasoning to different levels even he hadn't thought of before.
He softened up in time, of course. He stopped showing up empty handed, but with tea and snacks he'd grabbed on the way, and the hours you spent together in that little room gradually grew with every new praise he'd received. It no longer sounded like empty applause to him.
Still, of course, he didn't just magically get better with your help. The nights you picked apart his theses were the absolute worst.
"Is this really all the evidence you could find?" Your voice was condescending and cruel, holding the paper up to the light as Zandik whined in his chair, bound and squirming. The ropes dug into his naked skin, holding his arms and legs down and apart as a little vibrator remained strapped to his weeping cock. He struggled and whimpered before you, losing any illusion of cordiality while the dildo in his ass drove deeper every time he tried to move, brushing his sensitive prostate.
"Don't tell me this is all you can handle" you purred, lowering to be at eye level with him, "I've seen you come back to back more than twice in circumstances far harsher than this." You laughed softly, swiping your thumb over his flushed tip and smearing the precum across your palm.
"Hmm, with work like this, though, do you even deserve to cum tonight?"
Your thumbs started stimulating his nipples in slow circles, making him thrash and cry more.
"Y-you said that it was sufficient- oh!"
One hand came down to push the dildo deeper into his slutty hole, making his dick jump and twitch.
"I said sufficient, yes," you started thrusting it in and out, "what I did not say was excellent, satisfactory, worthy of presentation.."
His moans were the kind of delightful that left one quite surprised. He made the most beautiful sounds, sweet and wanton and alluring while he was being used. There wasn't another person you'd encountered that had a seductive charm quite like Zandik, even when he wasn't trying.
"Answer me, Zan. Do you think you deserve it?"
His resolve crumbled like old stone beneath his feet. You could always get exactly what you wanted from him, and rarely did he ever tell you no. For he, who had been so arrogant and rogue in his life, never met someone to put him in his place. The feeling was addictive."
You slapped him hard across his cheek, leaving a red hand mark to begin forming as the blood rushed into the stricken area. He yelped.
“Then you’ll have to work with what you get.”
From your pocket, you reached for the small remote connected to the vibrator, turning it up to its highest setting. He let out broken strings of moans and curses as you continued to fuck the toy into his ass, running your tongue flatly against his nipples.
He screamed as his body locked up, shooting his load straight onto the table, dirtying his research papers that he’d specifically brought in to have reviewed by you
You looked down at him, a cruel glint in your eyes as you scooped some of his cum onto your fingers, shoving it past his lips.
“You’ll have to start from scratch.”
Having that much control over a man like that was utterly intoxicating, and perhaps that is why you were so quick to search for him when the sages called for his expulsion.
He was already gone in the night when you checked his dorm, with no way of knowing where he’d ended up. Of course, he might’ve ended up in the hot desert to die, or made a feast by the Rishboland Tigers. You loathed to think too hard about. What brought you comfort was knowing he was far too brilliant to simply succumb.
Even as years passed, you thought of Zandik every now and then. He had been on your mind a little extra as of late, and just as you were packing your things one night, a shadow loomed beyond the door of your office.
Big, blue, feathery, and with a polished arrogance that struck immediate familiarity within you.
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I might make a part 2 of this on my own time when I finish up my other trades lowkey..
